


The Weasleyman

by AccioMjolnir



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crack, F/M, Fluff, Hermione is extremely online, Modern Era, Nonsense, Pining, Sea Shanties, all dem freckly weasley babies, everyone has children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29548425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioMjolnir/pseuds/AccioMjolnir
Summary: Hermione can't put her phone down. It starts out as one kind of problem and then causes a whole new one.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Charlie Weasley
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32
Collections: Love Fest 2021





	The Weasleyman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GinnySocks (ginnysocks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnysocks/gifts).



> This nonsense is for my dearest friend and incredible beta, [ginnysocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnysocks), who both puts up with and encourages the madness that spews forth from my mind. When I say "I have the bestworst idea," she always says "DO IT," and for that I thank her. 
> 
> Which is to say that this thing you're about to read is totally her fault. ;)

“Hermione? Her-mi-o-neeee,” Ron waved a hand in between her face and her iPhone, finally getting her attention. She looked up and smiled sheepishly as she looked around to see him and Harry both looking at her with twin expressions of resigned irritation.

“I swear, Hermione,” Harry said. “Ever since you became a muggle liaison--”

“I have to know what’s happening in the muggle world, it’s my job,” she said importantly, and both of them rolled their eyes. Ron even tipped his head back dramatically.

“You have shown me enough of Tweeter--”

“Twitter--”

“ _Twitter_ for me to know that it’s just a constant stream of nonsense that you don’t need to do your job,” he said. 

“Dean said there’s a term for this,” Harry said, gesturing broadly at Hermione and her phone, which she still held up, though her thumb was no longer sliding up and down the screen, as she was giving Harry her best withering stare. “He said it’s, what was it, Ron?”

 _“Extremely online,”_ Ron said. “Whatever that means.”

“Oh, what would he know,” Hermione said dismissively, ignoring the fact that they were absolutely nailing her down with razor-sharp accuracy. “He’s not even in muggle diplomacy.”

“No, he’s only related to a whole slew of them,” Harry said. “Anyway, the _point_ was, we were wondering if you’d watch the kids while we go see Ginny play next weekend.”

“Though now I’m wondering if we shouldn’t ask mum,” Ron said. “Lav would kill me if one of them lit the house on fire because ‘Mione’s watching some bloke flip himself off a roof on Trick-Talk.”

“TikTok,” Hermione corrected him. 

“You know what I mean,” he said. 

“Charlie’s in town,” Harry said. Hermione’s eyes flicked up at him and he smirked at her. 

There was a thing that happened to Hermione when Charlie was around that Harry had first noticed--and teased her for--all the way back in fourth year. It irritated her that she couldn’t seem to control it: she just seemed to get stupider. Only in his presence. Her typical ability to string together insightful, complex sentences would trickle out of her ears and she would turn into a pleasantly smiling simpleton, all because Charlie would smile or laugh or talk or breathe somewhere that she could witness it. In the summers when he’d roll his sleeves up for family pick-up games she could hardly speak, she was so entranced. She was in her mid thirties and she still turned to mush when he was around. He’d never seemed to notice. She was sure he must think she was addled, but he at least always treated her kindly regardless.

Hermione sank in her seat a little bit and tried not to turn red as Harry chuckled and said, “Maybe he’ll watch them.”

“Only if you want them staying up all night from his bedtime stories,” Ron said, oblivious to the entire exchange. He’d always thought of himself as the only Weasley she’d ever consider romantically, and when that didn’t pan out he had happily reentered a world where his brothers were all simply off the radar for Hermione by default. The whole notion that she might be attracted to one of them simply never occurred to him as a possibility, and as a result she’d been able to carry a torch for Charlie practically their whole lives and he was as oblivious to it as Gilderoy Lockhart would be. 

With Hermione’s focus inward, Ron got away with snatching her iPhone from her hand, as she’d gone back to scrolling her feed while he and Harry argued about her fitness to watch the six kids they had between them. She grumbled irritably and snatched at it, but he held it away.

“Why don’t you bring them all to the Burrow and Charlie and I can watch them together,” she offered. When Harry’s smirk turned into a suppressed laugh and a smile, she waved a hand dismissively and said, “There’s six of them, it’s easier when I’m not alone.”

“I don’t want my kids begging for a phone,” Harry said. “You’ll have to contain yourself.”

“Same,” Ron added. He turned to Harry. “Think Perce would want to come? If they have to watch nine kids instead of six she _definitely_ won’t have time to look at this thing.”

Harry chuckled as Hermione finally clambered up out of her seat and put one hand on Ron’s shoulder to hold him still, grabbing her phone back from him and tucking it swiftly into her pocket. “Not a bad idea, mate.”

***

Hermione should have gone to bed hours prior but Twitter had blown up earlier in the day, after discovering SeaShantyTok. A postman in Scotland recorded himself singing The Wellerman and people had duetted with it all over the internet. The result was that she was lying in the dark in her bedroom bathed in the glow of her iPhone screen, repeatedly watching strangers on the internet sing this sea shanty that she could not get out of her head.

She’d finally retweeted her favorite iteration just to pin it to her own profile for easy access. No trend on the internet had ever charmed her so thoroughly as the bloody Wellerman had. It was probable that she had watched the minute-long video at least a hundred times now.

With a sigh, she rolled over and set her phone on its charger, finally forcing herself to put it away. The rich chords of TikTok’s resident bass voices echoed in her mind and lulled her to sleep.

***

_“Aunt Hermione!”_

There was no room for her to get fully into the door as nine freckle-faced children of all sizes swarmed her. James, the eldest, was as tall as she was now, dark haired and green-eyed like his father. The youngest, Ron’s third, tried to squeeze in between others to cling to her calf. 

“Oi, watch it, Nessa,” Percy’s youngest chirped as she elbowed her way in. The determined little toddler just barreled through. Her hair was the same shade as her father’s, but curled in a halo around her head, Lavender’s texture having won out. Hermione smiled sweetly and dipped down to pick her up. 

“Let her inside, you ruffians,” came Charlie’s cheerful voice. He emerged from the sitting room and leaned on the doorway. Hermione looked up at him and her heart did a flip. He had his arms crossed over his broad chest. His hair was mostly drawn back in a low ponytail, but a long piece fell becomingly down the side of his face, having been shaken loose from the elastic. He had a dragon’s tooth on a string around his neck and a few piercings here and there, mostly in his ears. Stubble darkened his well-defined jaw. “Hey, Hermione.”

“Hi,” she beamed at him, and then she looked around her as the fleet of children gave her a bit of space, still all smiling cheerily at her. “Well go on, surely you were doing something interesting before I got here.”

“Not yet,” James offered. He didn’t really need a sitter, but where the others went, so did he. He reached over to ruffle his little sister’s hair, and she ducked away, making an irritated face. “We’re going to go throw a quaffle around.”

“No bludgers,” Charlie said, and Ron’s eldest sniffed irritably.

“You’re no fun,” he muttered. 

“And when you maim your cousins having fun, it’s my head their mums’ll have,” Charlie said. “So if I come out there and see a bludger I’ll have yours.”

“And nobody flies higher than the tallest tree,” Hermione called after them. The four eldest were out the door with merely some mumbled acknowledgements. Lily looked up at Hermione and frowned.

“Dad said I’m still too little,” she pouted.

“That’s because you are,” Hermione smiled gently. Then she glanced back at Charlie, who was still watching with that ever-present cheery smile of his. “I’m sure we can come up with something to do inside while the boys have their fun.”

***

“You look tired,” Charlie said, sinking down on the other end of the couch and throwing his arm across the back of it. He’d just finished putting Nessa to bed. Hermione had read stories to the younger children while he handled Nessa, the only one of them still in nappies. The older kids had disappeared into upper rooms of the Burrow to play wizard’s chess and exploding snap on their own with the warning that if they woke the younger ones, they’d answer to Charlie and his dragons.

It was a joking threat, but one that still seemed to keep the kids in line. 

“I was up late last night,” she admitted. 

“Reading?” he asked. It was a fair assumption.

“Watching stupid videos on the internet, actually,” she admitted. He raised a curious eyebrow and she chuckled. She pulled her phone out. To her surprise, Charlie just waited quietly while she pulled up her Twitter, rather than asking questions. “You’ve seen this before?”

“A couple of my coworkers are muggle-born,” he said. Then he grinned. “I have a hashtag, actually. One of them put me on TikTok once. Hashtag Dare Or Dare, because I never choose truth.”

“You _what?”_ she asked, and then she beamed when it made him chuckle. “Okay, we’ll come back to that. I have to show you this first.”

Hermione moved closer to him and pulled up her pinned tweet. Immediately the familiar sounds of The Wellerman came out of her phone, and Charlie smiled. It looped, starting over automatically when it came to an end. When she moved to stop it, he put a hand on her leg to stop her. 

“Let it go again,” he said. Hermione smiled, pulling her gaze from her phone to look at him instead. He watched the video go again. When it looped for a third time and he held a hand up to keep her from stopping it again, she decided just to sing along with it softly instead, enjoying it. 

On the fourth loop, Charlie started to sing along.

With the bass line.

Hermione nearly dropped her phone as she realized she’d never heard him sing before in her life. She’d have known. She’d already been head over heels for him since bleeding fourth year _without_ knowing that he could do that. Now she had a very, very big problem. 

It was too much. It bubbled over. 

She stopped the video when it started a fifth loop and turned in her seat. She was so close to him that this put her knees against his leg. Curiosity crossed his face and was followed almost immediately with confusion when she simply said, “You’re killing me.”

“Figuratively, right?” he asked, and she furrowed her brow. He grinned crookedly at her and added, “Because if literally, then I’m really at a loss as to how.”

“You sing bass.”

“Yes.”

“You sing _bass,”_ she repeated, and he laughed.

“Yes?”

“God,” she gave up on talking and reached over, put her hand on his shoulder, and pulled herself up to straddle his lap. Before he could stop her, before she could change her mind, she funnelled every last ounce of impulsive Gryffindor bravery she had in her entire body into kissing him. 

He made a curious little sound in his throat but didn’t stop her. In fact, after a short moment in which he seemed too stunned to understand, he did the single most thrilling thing Hermione could have imagined: he slid his arms around her back and kissed her back. He kissed her back and it was _incredible_ and then she started to wonder if she’d fallen asleep on the couch, if this was just her pent-up fantasies and exhaustion coming together for an incredibly poorly timed sexy dream with the man who was probably seated on the other end of the couch while she dozed. A little disbelieving laugh escaped her and he broke away.

“What?”

“Just… nothing,” she said, and she kissed him again, and this time he slipped the fingers of one hand into her hair and she let out a desirous little hum. It seemed to encourage him. He smiled against her mouth and then it was his turn to let out a little laugh and her turn to break away. “What?”

“I may have had a little fantasy or two about this,” he admitted. “Never thought you’d…”

“You never thought I’d… Charlie, I’ve been mad for you since I was fifteen.”

“I never claimed to be an observant man,” he said, his eyebrows sloping up at the revelation. It made her laugh again. Then he kissed her nose playfully and her heart did a little fluttery beat-skipping thing. She couldn’t stop smiling. Backing up a bit, she tipped her head a little.

“You never let on--”

“Mm, yes, I would much rather watch a slew of children than go to a quidditch match,” he deadpanned, and her jaw dropped a bit. 

“You… oh,” was all she managed. He chuckled and then pulled her back to him, drawing her into a slow and searing kiss that grew very swiftly into a full-blown snog session. They carried on that way, there in the sitting room of the Burrow, until the floo flared and half of Charlie’s family came tumbling through with Harry and found them there. 

Hermione scrambled off of Charlie’s lap and stood, and then Charlie stood beside her, sliding his arm around her waist and giving her a little squeeze. Ron was staring at the two of them like he’d been confunded.

“When did _this_ happen?” Ginny asked, beaming cheerily at her older brother. Charlie chuckled and then looked down at Hermione. He winked at her. 

“It’s been brewing,” he said vaguely. Ginny laughed brightly and bounced on her feet, clapping her hands with excitement. Next to her, Harry shook his head. 

“Well, at least it isn’t her phone,” Ron finally muttered, scratching at the back of his head, and Harry’s laugh was so loud that a few moments later Ron had to run upstairs to soothe his suddenly-screaming little girl.

**Author's Note:**

> [sings cheerily] I don't know if you've noticed before, but each time Charlie walks in the door... Your IQ goes down to 40. Maybe less.


End file.
